Search

In many countries people think TV and games takes hours away from reading and decreases the reading skills. We can not close our eyes and request games to be forbidden: games are part of our culture, the new form of storytelling and social interaction for younger generations. We should use that fact to build motivation around literacy and reading. This paper describes a Near Field Communication (NFC) based multiplayer mixed reality game “The Literature Race” that motivates the children to find information about books, apply that information in teams to solve the challenges in the game and finally get familiar with libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on learning analytics framework behind Math Elements mathematics game. The game, was introduced at ECGBL 2012. The novelty value of this design study is in development process of visualizing and data mining technologies behind the learning analytics. The analytic tools provide 1) easy access to follow progress and 2) real time analysis on the learning process. The analytics gives fast and easy to understand view into learning process, still supporting the story, the game play and motivation towards game play. In this paper we show the user centered development process, the improvements done according to user feedback and open the future research focuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our society is facing the challenges of continuous change, global competition, digitalization, and the replacement of human labor by smart automation. At the same time, companies are reporting a lack of skilled workers and global skills mismatches. We are solving a global challenge, and the most visible part of this is the skills mismatch by: 1) modeling national expertise using public data that is already available, 2) encouraging closer collaboration between the public sector and companies, 3) accelerating companies' access to skilled labor, 4) enabling the creation of new, high-value-added jobs and 5) increasing companies' competitiveness and value by matchmaking with the best experts. In technical terms, the Headai Talent Economy platform is about refining open and public data written in natural language to create autonomous machine learning semantic decision-making models - skills maps. Artificial intelligence can use these to process skills in the same way that an analyst would. The solution was developed piece by piece with customers. Working with our customers, we have already demonstrated that the Talent Economy platform enabled by our solution can create a driver for substantial growth in the development of labor markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Educational performance measures, like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), rank countries based on their educational system's performance. However, these activities require years of work for thousands of people to collect, analyze and report the data. Furthermore, the results are always two years old when published and there are tens of missing countries. In this study, a global game-based analytics was introduced and evaluated in a real world environment. The paper continues the study reported in ECGBL 2013. Real-time game-based assessments do have several advantages compared to traditional measures, but they are not yet ready to replace PISA. For example, sample collection has to be radically improved in order to minimize noise and bring out only the valid cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of sustainable energy production is complex: not only how energy is produced but also how it is transmitted into consumption places, how it is used, why it is used and how to deal with the possible waste. In order to give a wider perspective into energy for the candidates applying to engineering studies, we are developing a location-aware massive open online course (MOOC) type of energy production, transmission and consumption game. In addition to individual learning outcomes, we record tens of thousands of energy tags. From this data we can draw a map on how energy is produced, transmitted and consumed in a city level. This can be valuable information for city planning and development in terms of infrastructure, regulations, preferred technologies, and maybe architecture. The first pilots with this application will be done in autumn 2014 and the preliminary results will be first published at ECGBL 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries people think TV and games takes hours away from reading and decreases the reading skills.  We can not close our eyes and request games to be forbidden: games are part of our culture, the new form of storytelling  and social interaction for younger generations. We should use that fact to build motivation around literacy and reading.  This paper describes a Near Field Communication (NFC) based multiplayer mixed reality game “The Literature Race” that  motivates the children to find information about books, apply that information in teams to solve the challenges in the  game and finally get familiar with libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on learning analytics framework behind Math Elements mathematics game. The game, was  introduced at ECGBL 2012. The novelty value of this design study is in development process of visualizing and data mining  technologies behind the learning analytics. The analytic tools provide 1) easy access to follow progress and 2) real time  analysis on the learning process. The analytics gives fast and easy to understand view into learning process, still supporting  the story, the game play and motivation towards game play. In this paper we show the user centered development  process, the improvements done according to user feedback and open the future research focuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the theoretical and technical backgrounds on eedu elements game development project, which goal is to build Finnish elementary/primary school into a game that lasts six years. The fundamental background for eedu elements is, that globally we need school that can be exported anywhere and it is not bind into buildings. This is simply because 1) there is no possibilities for building school infrastructure with teachers for all developing countries. However there are good mobile data networks and high smartphone/tablet ratio. 2) in western countries, there are a lot of kids who are outlayers at school but would do well in different learning context, e.g. in games. 3) Games can give teacher more opportunities to support and coach the pupils than most content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we summarize first findings from eedu Elements user experience studies. eedu Elements is a game that brings the whole Finnish maths curriculum (primary school) available for players all over the world and it is optimized for tablets and smart phones. The game is based on teachable agent approach, which means that in the game students can teach skills to their game characters. Research focused on evaluating the implementation of the game and exploring player's attitudes about the game. The participants were Finnish (N = 43) and Ireland (N = 22) primary school students. Group interviews, eye-tracking and observation methods were used to evaluate the eedu Elements game. In general, the game was experienced as good or excellent learning game in all the studied age groups. The results showed that it took less than two minutes to learn how to play the game, but still the players were expecting to learn the gameplay even faster. It seems that users demands are nowadays so high that learning curve should be very steep. Thus the easy of use can be regarded as one of the crucial aspects influencing on diffusion of new game based solutions. Furthermore, the eye-tracking results indicated that players' perception patterns varied a lot and some players even missed relevant information during playing. The results showed that eye-tracking can provide important information from the quality of the game design and this information can be used to improve game's user interface and gameplay. However, we have to be careful when interpreting the eye movement data, because we cannot be sure if the player understands everything that he or she is paying attention to. Thus, eye-tracking should be complemented with offline methods such like retrospective interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User-generated media highlights sharing: sharing videos, images and texts in social media, as well as sharing character outfits and maps in games. However, behavior is one of the aspects that are not shared. The aim of this study is to show how user-generated behaviors can be shared in different types of sports games. According to the examples in this study, game and media developers can design extensions that enable users to easily construct behaviors. According to the preliminary results, we can model the sports behavior in a limited strategic sense. In terms of game play, the recorded and re-produced artificial behavior is human-like and realistic. For some athletes, our AI could learn nearly 70% of the same strategic behavior. In terms of cognitive sciences, we do not have a scientifically exact tool. However, in terms of game development, sports education and sports coaching, we do have a method that brings games and strategic simulations into an era of human-like, user-generated behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media services, such as YouTube, Flickr and Slideshare, contain enormous number of content valuable for education. If the requested theme can be effectively searched or recognized, teacher can easily construct the course material from social media sources. However, the search engines are not optimal for educational purposes: Search engines can list numerous pieces of content that matches more or less perfectly to keywords. After search there are thousands of pieces of content to check manually if they really fit to the requested subject. A common method to increase information accessibility in social media applications is tagging. However, when tags are used only as single words, we easily end up to information overload. In this study the general aim is to construct teachable agents that can learn conceptual structures in terms of conceptual learning. Problems related to information retrieval or semantics are widely studied, but not from learning point of view. By combining theories about cognitive psychology of learning and machine learning, we could make a completely new approach to decrease information overload. According to results, we can say that simulating human way to learn fits for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational game research tends to rely too often on behavioral activity rather than cognitive activity. How learning happens is methodologically very challenging to point out and thus it is usually avoided. In this paper we tackle the game based learning process with eye-tracking method. In particularly, the study focuses on exploring the meaning of cognitive feedback in game based learning process. Based on perceptual data we evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive feedback and identify game elements that may hinder the learning process. The results indicated that players' perception patterns varies a lot and some players even miss relevant information during playing. It seems that what sooner the player notices the cognitive feedback and grasps it meaning that better (effectively) they can play the game. The signaling method should be used strongly enough to highlight all the necessary elements. On the other hand, extraneous elements should be eliminated from the game world in order to avoid incidental processing in crucial moments. The results also showed that eye-tracking can provide important information from game based learning process and game designs. However, we have to be careful when interpreting the eye movement data, because we cannot be sure if the player understands everything that he or she is paying attention to. Thus, eye-tracking should be complemented with offline methods. In this study retrospective interview was used as a complementary method and it turned out to be very useful and increased the validity of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data Mining refers to methods to find patterns, dependencies or other meaningful information from large data sets. Common methods for data mining are based on regression analysis, Bayesian models, clustering algorithms and neural networks. Data Mining has been successfully applied in science, business and logistics for years. However, educational Data Mining is relatively young discipline focusing on understanding students' use of interactive learning environments. According to original ideas of Data Mining, there are no hypotheses set in advance: the data will reveal the answers. The study focuses on the process of conceptual change (N=818) while trying to reveal playing behavior that facilitates it and learning transfer. In the paper we briefly describe the conceptual change approach, data mining methods and our research framework for transfer. Finally, the results of the study are presented and discussed. The main result is a finding that difficulties in understanding different numbering systems are mediated by fraction numbers with odd numbered nominators. These results show the strengths of Educational Data Mining: we could point out difficulties and their backgrounds, which would not have been found without mining approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most learning theories relay on an assumption that concepts change through enrichment of prior knowledge. Conceptual change, as a learning theory, states that change in conceptual structures could not be achieved through additive mechanisms involving only enrichment of pre-existing knowledge. Conceptual change is required, for example in acquisition of the concept of fraction because it requires radical changes in the preexisting concept of natural number. The aim of this article is to study the conceptual change in the context of game based learning. The study focuses on the process of conceptual change trying to reveal playing patterns that facilitate and trigger it. In this article, conceptual change is studied through game designed to teach mathematics - number axis with decimal, fraction and percent numbers. Traditionally, the comparison between these numbering systems has been found relatively challenging. The overall aim of the study (N=369) is to broaden knowledge of the process of conceptual change in games involving teachable agents. The results clearly indicate that some of the learners had illusions of understanding about the number axis, but their high motivation and good metacognitive strategies lead to perception of the conflicting notions and finally resulted in more radical conceptual change. To summarize, the results of this study, as well as previous research, indicate that sufficient playing time, adequate prior knowledge, good metacognitive strategies, high motivation and game elements that trigger reflection support conceptual change. Thus educational games cannot be only supplementary amusement, but pedagogically well designed tools that should facilitate reflective processes both during and after the playing sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that we are moving towards a new generation of educational use of games. The third generation educational games stress the meaning of the teacher in game based learning by expanding the scope of the games from just playing to learning and teaching. Although, the shift towards third generation use of educational games has begun, the state of art of educational game research does not offer adequate foundation to design such games. In fact, it has been argued that some teachers are avoiding game based approaches because they are afraid to loose the control on learning process. Thus, the aim of this paper is to uncover the opportunities of third generation educational games and raise discussion about teachers' role in game based learning. The research is basically a meta study about authors' previous research in the area of educational games. In this paper, teachers' role has been approached from two perspectives: The first case is about teacher as a virtual agent in the game world and the second case focuses on how teacher can facilitate reflection both in the real world and in the game world. The cases are very different from a computational intelligence point of view, but the design of both games acknowledges a teacher as an important part of the learning process. The discussed approaches are meant to strengthen and speed up teachers' opportunities to receive detailed information about the learning process. With such solutions, teacher cannot only control the process, but he/she can use received information to master relatively large groups with numerous variances in skills. Finally, we argue that the user-centered design approach paying attention to both the needs of the students and the needs of the teachers would facilitate the diffusion of game based learning approach among teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]